Lydia R. Bailey (1779–1869) was a native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who married her cousin Robert Bailey late in the 1790s and carried on the family printing business following his death in 1808. She turned what had been a struggling enterprise into one of the largest and most highly respected printing concerns in Philadelphia, employing more than forty workers at its height. During a career that spanned more than half a century, Bailey had a long stint as Philadelphia’s official city printer and filled numerous contracts with local banks, canal companies, charitable organizations, the Presbyterian Church, and the University of Pennsylvania. She also published blank books, almanacs, religious tracts, and instructive works for children (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; Leona M. Hudak, Early American Women Printers and Publishers, 1639–1820 [1978], 613–5).

In the spring of 1809 TJ had subscribed to the third edition of Philip Freneau, Poems Written and Published during the American Revolutionary War, and Now Republished from the Original Manuscripts; Interspersed with Translations from the Ancients, and Other Pieces not Heretofore in Print, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1809; Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 1952–59, 5 vols. description ends no. 4438) (Freneau to TJ, 8 Apr. 1809, TJ to Freneau, 22 May 1809).